Childhood Education was Julie’s passion: she found in this profession the opportunity to travel the world, discovering new cultures and even giving her the chance to work with celebrities’ children.
Do you know that feeling of being so inspired by someone’s life, that you just want to become a better version of yourself? Our students’ can definitely experience this sensation when getting to know about our teachers’ stories. In this edition of “Meet our Staff” you’ll find out a little bit about Julie Tennet’s life, our lovely Childhood Education trainer
One thing is for sure: you can always pick the British by their accent and it works just the same with Julie. She’s originally from Jersey, a small island in the English Channel, between the coast of France and England. Her story in Australia has started years ago on an unpretentious working holiday visa. However, as happened to many of us, she fell in love with this warm land and decided to stay.
Her story with childcare, though, starts way before she could even think about moving here. She started in this industry 30 years ago, babysitting for her mother’s friend’s children, which led her to attend a childhood education course after she finished high school. These experiences were so positive that Julie kept working in this field.
What also made her really excited about this career was the possibility of working all around the globe. You won’t be surprised if we say that this is what she did: Bermuda, the Greek Islands and finally Australia were some of the countries that she lived in, receiving her income from babysitting jobs. After 3 years “down under”, our trainer decided to settle on the Gold Coast working in Long day care as a room leader, followed by assistant director and then director for the Sheraton Hotel Group. A few years later, she had her own children and decided to start a new business by herself: setting up and running playgroups in South Sydney. But she still had something “tickling her fancy”. In 2008, Julie decided to share her knowledge with VET students and never stopped teaching Diploma and Certificate III in Early Childhood Education and Care since then. She believes that those students who have a passion for children and the childcare industry will certainly make a very positive difference to our future generations:
“The first five years of a child’s life are the most crucial years, when the child’s brain is developing and wiring. If a child receives warm, loving, supportive care, along with many fun, diverse, age appropriate experiences their brain will develop to its’ full potential, allowing the child to absorb more information and knowledge as they grow. The role of the educator in early childhood is to provide a warm and caring environment, where children have the freedom to be children (through play experiences); to belong to and feel safe in their local community (childcare centre); and to become whoever or whatever their heart desires in the years ahead.”
You’ll never believe that our “pommy” teacher has turned down a casual temporary nanny job with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman because, at that time, she had just started her first directors’ position in a long day care centre. She wonders how life would be now if she had accepted to work with celebrities… We will never know, but we’re pretty lucky she didn’t take it, otherwise we’d may have never met our amazing Julie. Besides turning down jobs with famous people, she also loves to spend her free time exercising and socialising with her friends and family.
